"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of the opportunity provided to serve self-interest when Al Gore created the internet; and we should also thank Mark Zuckerburg and Jack Dorsey for creating Facebook and Twitter out of the kindness of their big hearts and not the thinness of their small wallets."

-Ben Franklin, Autobiography (1742)

Monday, March 21, 2011

The War of 1805 - Day 1: George Washington

Today we begin a week-long series of posts dedicated to one of the most popularly unpopular periods in America's history: The Zombie War of 1805. The history buffs out there will agree that the documentation from this area is so rife with inconsistency that many modern history books tend to unfairly ignore it entirely.

For those readers who are late to the party, a brief history lesson:

The Salem Witch Trials of the late 1600's resulted in an amount of social and spiritual unrest throughout the colonies that have seldom been matched since. Men and women, most of whom were completely innocent of any crime and merely victims of a terrified populace, were systematically put on trial and publicly killed in a variety of disturbing methods that do not need to be rehashed for the purposes of this account.

To make matters worse, the actual witches and warlocks that were discovered during this dark time rarely went down without a fight. In retrospect it can safely be said that the decision to begin humiliating and murdering people known to traffic in the black art of demonology was certainly not the brightest idea that came out of the colonial era. Death hexes, or "Gotchas" as they were eventually coined by way of witches commonly shouting "Gotcha!" after muttering a hex with their dying breath, became widespread during the ongoing years of tribulation.

The true horror behind these "gotchas" was not discovered until almost 200 years later. During the hot summer months of 1805, the number of reported attacks in and around cemeteries was nearly triple that of years past. Survivors were few even then but this was not unusual. Likewise, sightings of foul smelling assailants in tattered clothes or none at all were written off by magistrates due to the particularly hot summer evenings that year. As the death toll rose however, so did suspicions, and by September the reason was clear: the dead had risen to walk among us. Due to the scientific and technological limitations of the day, it was never learned exactly how Z Day occurred, nor how the curse continued to spread as zombies viciously attacked and fed on unprepared communities across the eastern seaboard.

The next few months almost spelled a disastrous end for the young nation. As stated previously, accurate accounts of the period are few and far between, but what little we have managed to uncover is nothing short of spectacular. If you have never had the opportunity to study this bit of history, you will see over the next few days that the brave men and women responsible for founding our great nation were also responsible for defending it from a threat that largely contributed to the downfall of both the Romans and the Mayans. So buckle your history belts and join us all this week as we embark on a journey to uncover the history behind the history and pay tribute to some of the greatest triumphs of all-time.

"The dead are not reason; they are not eloquence. They are force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Let's crack some skulls."